NGC 7814 is a magnitude 11.6 spiral galaxy, showing to us edge on, with the central dust lane prominent. The galaxy is estimated
to be about 40 million light-years from Earth and is smaller than the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, approximately 60,000 light-years across. Technical Information: L:R:G:B: 555:180:180:240 (a total of aa bit over 19 hours of light-frame exposure time); luminance was thirty-seven 15-minute images; red and green exposures were all 15-minute exposures;
blue all 20-minute exposures. Equipment: RC Optical Systems 14.5 inch Ritchey-Chretien carbon fiber truss telescope, with ion-milled optics and RCOS field flattener, at about f/9, and an SBIG STX-16803 camera with
internal filter wheel (SBIG filter set), guided by an SBIG AO-X, all riding on a Bisque Paramount ME German Equatorial Mount. Image Acquisition/Camera Control: Maxim DL, controlled with ACP Expert/Scheduler, working in concert with TheSkyX. Processing: All images calibrated (darks, bias and sky flats), aligned, combined and cropped in Pixinsight. Color combine in Pixinsight. Some finish work (background neutralization,
color calibration, some sharpening and noise reduction) done in Pixinsight; some cleanup finish work was done in Photoshop CC. Location: Data acquired remotely from Sierra Remote Observatories, Auberry, California, USA. Date: Images taken on many nights in September and October of 2022. Image posted December 8, 2022. Date: Image scale of full-resolution image: 0.56 arcseconds per pixel. Seeing: Generally good CCD Chip temperature: -25C Copyright 2022
Mark de Regt
Because of its resemblance to M104, the Sombrero Galaxy, this galaxy often is referred to as the "Little Sombrero Galaxy."
I am intrigued by the faint blob to the left of the galaxy in my photo. I could find nothing about it, but it does show up is some other photos of the area, so I believe it is real. Perhaps a satellite galaxy of
NGC 7814?
It generally is the case that an image I take has many small background galaxies in the uncropped version. But this field abounds in them, with scores of galaxies, and at least two galaxy groups I can see.